Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How do I get rid of rogue listings?
-
Unfortunately, Google has taken bits and pieces of my business and combined it with non-existent businesses and other rogue information. So now my business has 3 locations.
One proper listing that I created and manage.
One that uses my website address but nothing else is correct in the listing.
One that contains my name(incorrectly), but the address and everything else about it is incorrect.
I have reported these places many times but they continue to hang around and I am lost/confused on what to do next.
Please advise.
-
Hi Dignan,
The appropriate thing to do in cases like these it to go through the REPORT A PROBLEM link at the bottom of each problematic Place Page. It's a good idea to be signed into your account while doing this. Describe the situation and link to the correct listing for your business in the wizard. State that you have only one address - the one on your authoritative listing. Ask that these 2 other listings be removed.
Wait 4-6 weeks to hear back from Google (could take considerably less time these days, actually). If you do not see resolution, then take the matter to the new Google Places Help Forum. The new forum will be here:
http://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!forum/maps
Explain the steps you have taken and ask if a Top Contributor can please help you obtain resolution.
*In your shoes, I would also do some sleuthing to try to figure out where the other data is coming from...it's coming from somewhere and discovering the origin may help you to surmise what is going on.
Hope this helps and good luck!
Miriam
-
As you have your listing I would suggest that you continue to try and get those listings removed by reporting it to Google.
One way that you can demonstrate that your verified listing is the "credible" and only one is through local citation linkbuilding and getting people to place reviews on your listing.
The more activity will show hopefully push the other two down in SERP's and eventually be removed from Google.
Good luck,
Vahe
-
HI Brent,
Thanks for the reply. As of last week the phone numbers were different on the rogue listings, but I just checked...and guess what...both now have MY phone number.
So it looks like I could claim them. It was advised that the best way to deal with these listings would be to just report them to Google, opposed to claiming them.
They mentioned it was against the rules for me to have more than one listing(even if my intention was to nix the two rogue listings.)
Care to share your input?
-
This may be obvious but you haven't mentioned it. Did you try to claim the listings? Or are they already verified and claimed by somebody else?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to get rid of bot verification errors
I have a client who sells highly technical products and has lots and lots (a couple of hundred) pdf datasheets that can be downloaded from their website. But in order to download a datasheet, a user has to register on the site. Once they are registered, they can download whatever they want (I know this isn't a good idea but this wasn't set up by us and is historical). On doing a Moz crawl of the site, it came up with a couple of hundred 401 errors. When I investigated, they are all pages where there is a button to click through to get one of these downloads. The Moz error report calls the error "Bot verification". My questions are:
Technical SEO | | mfrgolfgti
Are these really errors?
If so, what can I do to fix them?
If not, can I just tell Moz to ignore them or will this cause bigger problems?0 -
How do I get coupon information like retailmenot has on the SERPs?
Hello can anyone tell me how I can implement the same tactic that RetailMeNot is using to populate coupon information in the search results? They have below there meta description 4 fields labeled:Coupon Codes: 38, Free Shipping Deals: 6, Best Discount: 20% off, & Total Offers: 49 Is there some schema markup here? Or is this only allowed for RMN I have not seen it elsewhere but want my website coupons page to compete with them in the SERPs. Appreciate your help! dQNkHrb
Technical SEO | | Serenawong1 -
Getting rid of pagination - redirect all paginated pages or leave them to 404?
Hi all, We're currently in the process of updating our website and we've agreed that one of the things we want to do is get rid of all our pagination (currently used on the blog and product review areas) and instead implement load more on scroll. The question I have is... should we redirect all of the paginated pages and if so, where to? (My initial thoughts were either to the blog homepage or to the archive page) OR do we leave them to just 404? Bear in mind we have thousands of paginated pages 😕 Here's our blog area btw - https://www.ihasco.co.uk/blog Any help would be appreciated, thanks!
Technical SEO | | iHasco0 -
Is there a way of changing the Permalink without getting the 404 Error?
Hi, I am new to this all.. Is there a way of changing the permalink for example from: domain/content/ to domain/profile/ without receiving the 404 error message. It's just that since my website has been developed, some pages and their content have changed but the permalink still shows the name of the old page which may be confusing. Ps. Please use most simple language for explanations as I am really new to it. Thank you! Ve
Technical SEO | | MissVe0 -
Google Showing Multiple Listings For Same Site?
I've been optimizing a small static HTML site and have been working to increase the keyword rankings, yet have always ranked #1 for the company name. But, I've now noticed the company name is taking more than just the first position - the site is now appearing in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd position (each position referencing a different page of the site). Great.. who doesn't want to dominate a page of Google! ..But it looks kind of untidy and not usually how links from the same site are displayed. Is this normal? I'm used to seeing results from the same site grouped under the primary result, but not like this. any info appreciated 🙂
Technical SEO | | GregDixson0 -
What is the best method to block a sub-domain, e.g. staging.domain.com/ from getting indexed?
Now that Google considers subdomains as part of the TLD I'm a little leery of testing robots.txt with something like: staging.domain.com
Technical SEO | | fthead9
User-agent: *
Disallow: / in fear it might get the www.domain.com blocked as well. Has anyone had any success using robots.txt to block sub-domains? I know I could add a meta robots tag to the staging.domain.com pages but that would require a lot more work.0 -
Robots.txt file getting a 500 error - is this a problem?
Hello all! While doing some routine health checks on a few of our client sites, I spotted that a new client of ours - who's website was not designed built by us - is returning a 500 internal server error when I try to look at the robots.txt file. As we don't host / maintain their site, I would have to go through their head office to get this changed, which isn't a problem but I just wanted to check whether this error will actually be having a negative effect on their site / whether there's a benefit to getting this changed? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | themegroup0 -
Struggling to get my lyrics website fully indexed
Hey guys, been a longtime SEOmoz user, only just getting heavily into SEO now and this is my first query, apologies if it's simple to answer but I have been doing my research! My website is http://www.lyricstatus.com - basically it's a lyrics website. Rightly or wrongly, I'm using Google Custom Search Engine on my website for search, as well as jQuery auto-suggest - please ignore the latter for now. My problem is that when I launched the site I had a complex AJAX Browse page, so Google couldn't see static links to all my pages, thus it only indexed certain pages that did have static links. This led to my searches on my site using the Google CSE being useless as very few pages were indexed. I've since dropped the complex AJAX links and replaced it with easy static links. However, this was a few weeks ago now and still Google won't fully index my site. Try doing a search for "Justin Timberlake" (don't use the auto-suggest, just click the "Search" button) and it's clear that the site still hasn't been fully indexed! I'm really not too sure what else to do, other than wait and hope, which doesn't seem like a very proactive thing to do! My only other suspicion is that Google sees my site as more duplicate content, but surely it must be ok with indexing multiple lyrics sites since there are plenty of different ones ranking in Google. Any help or advice greatly appreciated guys!
Technical SEO | | SEOed0